Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security

Cold War (1972–1989): the Collapse of the Soviet Union

█ JOSEPH PATTERSON HYDER

By the early 1970s, the Soviet Union was at the peak of its power. The
Communist Party remained the sole political force in the Soviet Union, but
decades of post-Stalinist economic reforms left the Soviet empire with a
seemingly robust economy and an increased standard of living for Soviet
citizens. Wages in the Soviet Union increased sharply. The Soviet Union
was the world's leading producer of steel and oil. Urban dwellers
enjoyed modern appliances, such as televisions and dishwashers, and lived
mostly in the plentiful newly-constructed single-family apartments.

In addition to these economic advantages at home, the Soviet Union
attempted to assert itself as the world's dominant superpower. For
nearly every Soviet success in the early 1970s, the United States suffered
a setback. While the oil-rich Soviet economy continued to grow, the
economy of the United States strained under the pressure of the OPEC
imposed oil embargo of 1972 and 1973.

The Soviet Union also prevailed on the international stage. Soviet-backed
North Vietnamese forces expelled American troops after a prolonged
conflict. The communist victory in Vietnam, coupled with U.S. public
opposition to the conflict, signaled an end to the American policy of
communist containment in Southeast Asia. With further containment of
communism in doubt, the United States had to reposition itself on the
international scene. The administration of President Richard M. Nixon
embarked on a policy of détente with China, culminating with
Nixon's trip to China, and, to some degree, with the Soviet Union.
The pace of Soviet nuclear weapon production greatly alarmed Washington.
Fearing a Soviet advantage in the arms race, Nixon signed the Strategic
Arms Limitations Talks (SALT I).

In addition to Southeast Asia, Soviet ideology was gaining support in
other parts of the world, including Latin America. Soviet-supported troops
in Central and South America alarmed American officials, who feared
communist expansion in the Western Hemisphere. Still deeply

Berliners sing and dance on top of the Berlin Wall in front of the
Brandenburg Gate to celebrate the opening of East-West borders in
1989. Built of barbed wire and concrete in 1961, the wall divided
Berlin and became the most powerful symbol of the Cold War.

AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

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wounded by opposition to the Vietnam War, however, America resorted to
conducting covert operations in Latin America. During the administration
of President James E. Carter, communist backed Sandinistas overthrew
Nicaragua's government. President Ronald Reagan later provided
financial and material support to anti-Sandinista rebels. Reagan also
backed anti-communist forces in El Salvador, even though Congress did not
always agree with the White House on the issue of Nicaragua and El
Salvador.

With proxy victories in Southeast Asia and Latin America and with a
booming national economy, the power of the Soviet Union appeared
formidable under Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. To many outside
observers, the Soviet Union appeared to be on the verge of winning the
Cold War. The post-Brezhnev years, however, would see the internal
collapse of the Soviet Union. Even while the Soviet Union was soaring to
new heights, cracks were beginning to form in the monolithic empire.
Economic troubles, military failures, and emerging nationalism would soon
result in the end of the Soviet Union and communist regimes in Eastern
Europe.

Economic stagnation and the arms race.
The vigorous Soviet economy of the late-1960s and early 1970s quickly
fell victim to the very factors that had contributed to its success,
central planning and raw materials allocation. Brezhnev recognized that
the Soviet economy was slowing, and attempted to patch problems rather
than completely overhaul the system. His efforts failed. Even if Brezhnev
had attempted to overhaul the Soviet economy, the highly entrenched
special interests that made their living by manipulating the Soviet
Union's centrally planned economy could have defeated
Brezhnev's efforts.

Throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union's GNP
and industrial output continued to increase, but at a lessening pace,
eventually leading to economic stagnation. The Ninth Five Year Plan
(1970–1975) saw a growth rate of approximately 3%. The period of
1975–1980 experienced a growth rate of between 1% and 1.9%,
depending on whether revised Soviet numbers or the West's estimate
is examined. Likewise, 1980–1985 saw a further decline in economic
growth, between 0.6% and 1.8%. Declining economic growth rates were not
confined to the Soviet Union. Eastern Europe, with its economies
intertwined with the Soviet Union's, suffered a similar fate.

This declining growth rate in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in the Soviet
Union receiving a diminishing rate of return on capital investment. This
proved disastrous for the Soviet economy, because by 1980, the Soviet
Union
was spending nearly one-third of its GNP on capital investment, with most
of the sum dedicated to the military. The military was consuming such a
large portion of the Soviet economy for two reasons: the Soviet
involvement in Afghanistan and the arms race with the United States. These
two events would weigh heavily in the Soviet economic demise and lead to
its inevitable fall. A weak economy prevented the Soviet Union from
reacting appropriately to each experience.

The stagnant Soviet economy of the 1970s would have faired far worse had
it not been for vast oil and natural gas production propping up the
economy. By the late 1970s, technological backwardness and poor management
under the centrally planned Soviet economy resulted in depleted oil and
gas reserves. This led Brezhnev to turn his eye towards the oil and gas
reserves of Central Asia. Afghanistan had long been a relatively
undeveloped country comprised of numerous semi-autonomous ethnic groups.
Brezhnev assumed that the Soviet Union could achieve a quick and decisive
victory over the country and expand its influence of Communism into
Central Asia.

The United States and the rest of the world quickly condemned the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The United States also provided covert
support to the mujahideen, or Afghani resistance fighters. Rapid turnover
in Soviet leadership following the death of Brezhnev in 1982 also hampered
the war effort. The short-lived regimes of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin
Chernenko provided for an inconsistent Afghan policy. The Soviet military
operation quickly bogged down and faced stiff resistance in the harsh
terrain of Afghanistan.

The Soviets erroneously assumed that since the Afghans were economically
disadvantaged, they would be quickly defeated and embrace communism. The
opposite result happened. As the Afghans had little to lose by continuing
to fight, instead of driving Afghanistan to communism, the Soviet invasion
forged the Afgani Islamic resistance. A decade after the invasion, Soviet
troops withdrew.

The war in Afghanistan had an even more adverse effect on the Soviet Union
than the Vietnam War had on the United States. Thousands of Soviet troops
died in a conflict that resulted in the defeat of a superpower by a
developing country. Moreover, the conflict strained an already weak
economy. The conflict angered Soviet citizens, and they began demanding
accountability from the state. Brezhnev and his successors intended the
war in Afghanistan to reassert the supremacy of the Soviet Union. Instead,
the conflict proved that the superpower's might was waning.

The war in Afghanistan also distracted the Soviet Union from its arms race
with the United States, thus allowing America to gain a technological
advantage. The United States ratcheted up pressure on the U.S.S.R. through
several means. The Reagan administration began placing missiles in Western
Europe, primarily in Western Germany, strategically located to intimidate
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Reagan also began building up the
U.S. military. Reagan commissioned new aircraft carriers and expanded
America's stealth aircraft program. To the Soviets, these actions
signaled a widening weapons gap, particularly in terms of technologically
advanced weapons.

Perhaps the greatest threat to the Soviet Union was the United
States' Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known
conventionally as Star Wars. The SDI was a planned satellite based weapons
system that would detect and destroy missiles fired at the United States.
Such a technological advancement would have rendered Soviet ICBMs useless.
The Soviet Union tried to dissuade the United States from implementing the
SDI, but the Reagan administration refused to back away from the proposal.
In reality, the SDI was only in the technological planning stages; the
Soviets, however, bought America's bluff, prompting a quick and
expensive advance in their lagging military technology. This increased
spending further accelerated the Soviet economic decline.

Realizing a weapons gap, the Soviet Union began pushing the Reagan
administration for nuclear arms talks following the death of Brezhnev in
1982. The U.S. soon entered negotiations over the Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty (START). However, numerous changes in post-Brezhnev Soviet
leadership, Solidarity strikes in Poland, and other issues prevented the
completion of the START during the Reagan administration.

Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War.
After a decade of over-inflated military expenditures, dwindling oil
revenue, and a centrally-planned economy that was too rigid to adapt to
consumer demands, Mikhail Gorbachev, upon assuming office, declared the
Soviet economy to be in a "pre-crisis." Gorbachev
immediately transformed the face of Soviet politics. Gorbachev quickly
appointed new members to the Politboro and Secretariat, ridding each of
many hardline, longtime bureaucrats. Gorbachev also attempted to reform
the KGB, replacing many agents and bureaucrats. Despite the shake-up, the
KGB's operational power emerged from Gorbachev's early
reforms relatively unscathed.

After reforming the government, Gorbachev set out to reform the economy
and ultimately, Soviet society. Gorbachev's economic reforms (
perestroika,
or restructuring), were perceived as noble, but poorly executed. The
Twelfth Five Year Plan tried ambitiously and quickly to reform the Soviet
economy. Gorbachev sought to update industrial equipment and computer
systems, while simultaneously expecting workers to produce higher quality
products in greater quantities. Gorbachev also tried to decentralize the
economy by giving different regions greater control over industry. All of
these goals proved to be unrealistic given Gorbachev's timetable to
dismantle the gargantuan Soviet bureaucracy in favor of a more streamlined
and efficient system.

By 1986, Gorbachev also began experimenting with the notion that greater
democracy, if presented in the
proper format, would lead to increased socialism. Gorbachev wanted to
strip away Stalinism and its accompanying bureaucracy and return to the
communism of Lenin. Initially, Gorbachev underestimated the effect that
allowing Soviet citizens to question the past, in particular the brutality
of Stalin, would have upon the citizenry, leading them to follow their
lines of questioning up to the present day. Soon, however, Gorbachev came
to accept and embrace the concept that he termed
glasnost,
or "openness."

Glasnost initially allowed only the divulgence of information by the
state. Gorbachev held that if the Soviet Union was more open and honest
about its past, then Soviet and Eastern European citizens would be more
likely to follow Gorbachev's economic lead. Even a large number of
bureaucrats in the KGB supported glasnost. The KGB's information
network had become burdened and as ineffective as the bureaucracy that it
supported. Therefore, many KGB officials assumed that fostering an
atmosphere of openness would result in new and better informants.

Although Gorbachev intended glasnost to strengthen the communist regime,
he did not initiate a crack-down when Soviet citizens went beyond the
original intent of glasnost. Soviet intellectuals began questioning the
very tenets of Soviet Communism and attacked the Communist Party in
newspapers, journals, film, and books. Eastern European thinkers followed
the lead of their Soviet counterparts.

Consequently, glasnost had the unintended effect of spurring nationalist
and anti-communist movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics.
Dissidents in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and other
Soviet-satellite states staged labor demonstrations. Citizens took to the
streets, demanding that the Communist Party step aside and allow
democratic elections. In fall 1989, the Berlin Wall, long a symbol of the
division between Eastern Europe and the world, fell, allowing East and
West Berliners to cross freely. The Communist Party and its East Germany
secret police organization, the Stasi, had lost power. Within months of
the fall of the Berlin Wall, other Eastern European countries broke away
from Moscow's influence and expelled their communist leaders. With
the exception of Romania, most of the revolutions of 1989 and early 1990
were relatively peaceful.

In the wake of the Eastern European revolts and the euphoria that
followed, the Soviet Union had little choice but to allow greater
freedoms. In February, 1990, the Communist Party agreed to relinquish its
political monopoly. Many of the civic groups that had been voicing
displeasure with the Soviet system formed political parties. Most of these
new parties, especially those outside of Russia had a nationalist agenda.
Within a month, the Baltic republic of Lithuania declared itself an
independent state. Other Soviet republics quickly followed.

In June 1991, Gorbachev allowed free elections to choose a president of
the Russian Republic. Boris Yeltsin, a former Gorbachev-supporter, won a
landslide victory over Gorbachev's chosen candidate. In August,
1991, a group of communists hardliners attempted a poorly organized coup
while Gorbachev was on vacation at the Black Sea. The coup failed, and
strengthened Boris Yeltsin, the primary target of the coup. The coup also
undermined the leadership of Gorbachev, who continued to govern
ineffectively until his resignation on December 25, 1991. The following
day, the Supreme Soviet officially declared an end to the Soviet Union.

█ FURTHER READING:

BOOKS:

Baucom, Donald.
The Origins of SDI.
Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992.